Ab Initio
by meggannn
Summary: John and Sherlock meet. What happens next depends on you.


**Title:** Ab Initio  
**Summary:** John and Sherlock meet. What happens next depends on you. _  
_**Genre:** General  
**Rating:** T  
**Word Count:** 2,000  
**Warnings/Spoilers:** references to thoughts of suicide and various deaths / spoilers through s2

**Notes:** Inspired by/loosely based on the style and structure of Margaret Atwood's short story "Happy Endings." Hers is a lot better than whatever this is, though - this fic feels more like a drunk Sherlock Holmes Mad Libs. Not beta'd or britpicked, apologies for any mistakes or typos.

* * *

**Ab Initio**

John and Sherlock meet. What happens next depends on quite a lot of things.

**A.**

John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are introduced through a mutual friend in a lab in St. Bartholomew's Hospital on January 29, 2010. Sherlock, looking for a new flatmate, offers him the upstairs room in 221B and suggests they meet there the following evening. Against his better judgment, John goes. It takes a string of serial suicides, a monologue in a cab ride, and a dead taxi driver to convince John to accept the offer, and they spend the rest of their lives solving cases and running across London investigating impossible mysteries and ignoring their family's nagging and confronting criminal masterminds with intellectual face-offs and going behind the law force to get investigations done and giggling at crime scenes and keeping a pet dog named Gladstone and perhaps enjoying the occasional shag. The end.

**B.**

John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are introduced through a mutual friend in a lab in St. Bartholomew's Hospital on January 29, 2010. Sherlock, looking for a new flatmate, offers him the upstairs room in 221B and suggests they meet there the following evening. John doesn't show. Sherlock Holmes dies later that night from a poisoned pill. The end.

**C.**

John doesn't show because a sleek black car pulls up to the street as he's on his way to Baker Street. He's brought to an abandoned car park where he meets a suited man that knows far too much on his medical history and military discharge. Upon confirmation that John is indeed so financially desperate as well unattached enough to Sherlock Holmes to be willing to move in and pass along information on his whereabouts, the man in the car park reinstates him as Captain in the Fifth Northumberland Fusiliers, and promptly sends him back off to Afghanistan. Sherlock Holmes still dies from a poisoned pill.

**D.**

Or he doesn't, and he discovers what his brother has done as soon as Lestrade is finished nagging him to fill out paperwork on the cabbie case. He ignores every argument Mycroft tells him about the army doctor being too untrustworthy, too pedestrian – he wouldn't last a week, Sherlock, you can do better – and demands he bring the doctor back to London. Mycroft looks into it and discovers Captain John Watson has been shot once more, fatally this time, since his redeployment three weeks ago, and is no longer available as a potential flatmate for his brother. Instead Sherlock dies three years later of a knife wound and his body is dumped into the Thames, where it's discovered and fished out by the Scotland Yard twelve hours later. The end.

**E.**

The same as in D, except it's a drug overdose.

**F.**

John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are introduced through a mutual acquaintance in a local hospital in 1881. Looking to split the rent at a flat at Baker Street, Holmes and Watson decide they are compatible and move in together. Dr. Watson is recovering from the Second Anglo-Afghan War and Holmes doesn't tell him he's a consulting detective until clients start arriving at their flat, but, well. It's the same as A except a century and some thirty years earlier. The end.

**G.**

Joan Watson and Sherlock Holmes meet in New York City when Sherlock's father hires her as a sober companion. Sherlock is insufferable and rude and British and completely clean. Joan is resilient and getting rather tired of the cotton swabs and sobriety meetings herself, though she never says so aloud. They keep a pet turtle named Clyde and Joan decides to stay on as Sherlock's assistant after her time as his companion is over. Everything continues as it does in A, except with one different name and gender.

**H.**

However it is, it all ends with James (or Jim or Professor or Jack or J) Moriarty and a fall. Sherlock Holmes dies, John Watson grieves, and his life goes on, sans colleague and best friend. The end.

**I.**

John meets Mary and falls in love. They have a happy, emotionally fulfilling relationship and pursue engaging, productive careers and pastimes. They buy a house and have a few children who grow up a little too quickly and John remembers the consulting detective from time to time but has put his old friend to rest. John dies a peaceful death at a ripe old age surrounded by a swarm of loving great-grandchildren. Mary eventually follows after. The end.

**J.**

Except his friend isn't dead, and Mary dies before him, and Sherlock follows John home one day in disguise. Upon realizing his identity, three years or eighteen months or a decade after Sherlock Holmes's apparent death, John faints.

**K.**

Or he punches him.

**L.**

He doesn't forgive him.

**M.**

Or he does.

**N.**

It's not really the same after Sherlock returns from the dead, but they try anyway.

**O.**

It's exactly the same after Sherlock returns from the dead, and the same continues as in A.

**P.**

All right, but Sherlock is still rude and unpredictable and mad and while John still loves all those things, still stays, he's also unconsciously coming up with a list of reasons to leave. He's getting on in years and can't go chasing around criminals like he used to. He loves Sherlock in every possible way you can love a friend/lover/brother/partner/acquaintance/InsertYourOwnAnswer but he can't keep this up much longer, and one day before he can have this talk, John's leg acts up again, the first time it has in years, and the suspect they're chasing blows a bullet through his abdomen. Sherlock doesn't realize what's happened until an hour later, when he's successfully apprehended the criminal and goes looking for his companion only to find his body wide-eyed, pale, and bleeding out on the sidewalk. Two weeks later Sherlock Holmes dies of a drug overdose. The end.

**Q.**

John does sit him down, they have the conversation, and Sherlock is calm. He tells John that understands, and then he tells him to leave and not come back.

**R.**

Sherlock freezes. Then he argues back and sneers and taunts and mocks and John storms out in a fit of rage. He gets a new flat on the other side of London and miraculously manages to snatch a new job and find a new girlfriend and it takes him a month to realize Sherlock's been breaking into his new place and taking his things back to 221B in an effort to get him to come home to retrieve them. Sherlock is given a proper lecture when John does show up at his doorstep and Sherlock replies that he could have texted or emailed, he didn't _have_ to come around, his presence surely indicates he wants to come back anyway, and John tells him to shut up and Sherlock abruptly kisses him instead, quite rough and quite sad, and things escalate and in the morning they decide it's better, really, to part ways, because this isn't working out, but sure they'll still be friends, the best of friends, and they manage not to speak to each other for two months until John realizes he's left his spare jacket at 221B and Sherlock politely invites him over to dinner instead and John agrees but they end up arguing and shagging on the couch this time and arguing again in the morning and John leaves and comes back four days later to apologize and they go through the whole deal over again.

**S.**

When they're on, the longest they've been together since the whole cycle in R had started three years ago, John is working with Sherlock for his first case since the detective's death, and Sherlock finally manages to get himself killed. It doesn't matter how, some criminal or other, and John never stops blaming himself. Sherlock Holmes dies, John Watson grieves, and his life goes on, sans colleague and best friend, and things continue as they do in I.

**T.**

John is the one who dies, and Sherlock never stops blaming himself. John Watson dies, Sherlock Holmes grieves, and his life goes on, sans colleague and best friend, and things continue as they do if you assume that A has never happened, except Sherlock likely dies a lot sooner and the percentage of it happening of a drug overdose increases by about twenty-three percent. If you want, the space containing John's death can be filled in with "poison" or "strangling" or "drowning" or "asphyxiation" or "blood loss." Whatever you pick, just make it tough and gory and furthering a higher purpose – make sure, at least, that despite his death, the bad guy gets caught and a victim gets saved. John Watson wouldn't prefer it as anything less.

**U.**

Or John's the genius and Sherlock's the one with the steady hands and kinder heart. There's a lot less bickering but there is a bit more tension in the atmosphere of the flat because Sherlock isn't sure how much to trust this brilliant army doctor, this war-battered Einstein who understands his job better than he does, and he's just a mortician at Bart's. His mistrust is proven right, one day, when John puts Sherlock to sleep with a syringe full of something he doesn't recognize when he isn't looking and he doesn't wake up again. John is arrested for murder and illegal human experimentation and kicks the bucket in prison instead. The end.

**V.**

Irene Adler whirls into their lives and if you don't want her to whirl back out, then Sherlock has an affair with her, John finds out and leaves, and everything continues as it does in R.

**W.**

John dies of blood loss in the Afghanistan desert and Sherlock dies of a poisoned pill and London. They never meet. The end.

**X.**

John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are introduced through a mutual friend in a lab in St. Bartholomew's Hospital on January 29, 2010. Sherlock, looking for a new flatmate, offers him the upstairs room in 221B and suggests they meet there the following evening. Against his better judgment, John goes. At a crime scene, Sally Donovan warns him to stay away from Sherlock Holmes. John heeds her advice and tells Sherlock that he doesn't think it will work out. He finds a new place to live, his housemate is a normal guy with normal problems, and everything's okay. Sometimes John remembers glimpsing Sherlock's name in the papers. Mostly, though, he remembers the kettle's just barely started boiling when he opens up The Sun on June 16, 2012 and sees the words "suicide" and "fake genius." He puts the paper on the kitchen counter and presses his hands to his face and closes his eyes.

**Y.**

John Watson and Sherlock Holmes are introduced through a mutual friend in a lab in St. Bartholomew's Hospital on January 29, 2010. John offers him his phone, Sherlock asks him, "Afghanistan or Iraq?", John says, "Afghanistan," and Sherlock smiles and offers him a place to live and a reason not to put his Browning in his mouth.

**Z.**

It happens and happens or it doesn't happen at all, but when it does, it's quite brilliant and impossible and extraordinary, despite 221B being a pigsty, and god, there are limbs in the fridge and bloodied hair in his mug. Sherlock solves London's problems and helps the world make sense until it all spins back around again, and John puts him back together when it's done. Sometimes John's an army doctor and sometimes the limp's not fake and sometimes he doesn't forgive Sherlock as easily for his cruelty or imperfections or lies (_three years, Sherlock, god, I mourned you, how could you – _), but whenever he's asked why he stays, John can only offer, "It's where I need to be." And John stays, stays, stays, god, Sherlock lives for the staying, and in return, he only lights John up from inside and makes him feel useful, worthwhile, makes him feel real again. Only that.

They die in one way or another, and the how is important, of course it is, but it's not a suicide and it's not from a poisoned pill and it's not from military service in Afghanistan. And they don't think about the why much either, because John won't pretend to know all the answers and Sherlock won't pretend to be sentimental. It's a what and a what and a what that leads to their hows and whens, and what matters as they lean against the wall in the hallway of 221B laughing and panting, in a darkened swimming pool with a madman, on the roof of the hospital where they first met, is only that John offered Sherlock his phone and said, "Here," as Sherlock reached out to take it. "Use mine."


End file.
